Foodgrain price stabilization: Implications of private storage and subsidized food distribution

Through simulation exercises, this paper explores the implications of private storage and subsidized distribution of foodgrain for price stabilization policies in India. A multi-market equilibrium approach is used to incorporate the simultaneity in the determination of supply and demand for the three major cereals, namely, rice, wheat, and coarse cereals. The policy implications of the results obtained are relevant to the current debate on agricultural policy reforms in India.     

Modeling the welfare impacts of agricultural policies in developing countries

This paper presents a new model incorporating features of developing country agriculture likely to shape the welfare outcomes of alternative agricultural policies. The model features heterogeneous households linked through markets in a rural economy-wide structure, with endogenous market participation for farmers facing transactions costs. We use it to simulate the impacts on rural welfare of market price supports, production subsidies, input subsidies, and the removal of transaction costs. Applications to six countries demonstrate the diversity of potential impacts, exhibit some systemic differences compared with impacts in developed countries, and identify specific circumstances under which market interventions may be only slightly less efficient than direct payments at transferring incomes to rural households.     

Adjustment costs in labour markets and the distributional effects of trade liberalization: Analytics and calculations for Vietnam

This paper explores the implications of different labour market adjustment formulations for the analysis of trade liberalization across different sectors and households in the Vietnamese economy using computable general equilibrium (CGE) models. The model is calibrated to a model admissible Vietnamese data set for 1997.We use five different adjustment cost treatments in analyzing the effects of trade liberalization in Vietnam. We compare simulation results from each and show how different treatments can significantly affect the distributional impacts of policy reforms, such as the trade liberalization. First, labour is treated as fully mobile across all sectors in the economy. Second, the sectors of economy are broken down into the two blocks of agricultural and industrial-service sectors and labour markets are treated as segmented by sector block. No mobility of labour between blocks is allowed while labour within each sector block remains fully mobile. The third is the same as the second, but movement within each agricultural and industrial-service sector block involves transactions costs. In the fourth, mobility of workers from the agricultural to industrial-service sectors and vice versa is possible with transactions costs. Finally, we calibrate the model with unemployment but no adjustment costs for labour reallocation to explore how model results differ in terms of adjustments in the labour market and welfare effects.Our results indicate significant differences in the impacts from trade liberalization across these cases. The redistributional impact of trade liberalization is sharper against poor rural households with segmented labour markets and with transactions costs, while aggregate efficiency gains are similar to no adjustment cost analyses. The conclusion is the choice of model structure for labour markets is crucially important for the perceived distributional impacts of trade liberalization.     

The impact of the Doha trade proposals on farmers’ incomes in China

This paper analyzes the potential impacts of the Doha trade proposals (those of the USA, EU and G20) on agricultural production and incomes of China's farmers by region and income group. By linking a global trade model to a national policy model which itself is connected to a set of disaggregated household data, we are able to assess the effects of the proposed Doha trade liberalizations on households both at the national and regional levels. According to the results of the model, the impacts of a Doha Round agreement on households differ significantly from those of China's WTO accession. China's economy would benefit from the trade liberalization associated with the Doha Round. The overall impacts, however, are relatively minor. Although farmers will benefit at the national level, the gains among farmers vary largely by income group and province. Also, the impacts on households that produce different types of crops differ.     

Partial cooperation in strategic multi-sided decision situations

We consider a normal-form game in which there is a single exogenously given coalition of cooperating players that can write a binding agreement on pre-selected actions. The actions representing other dimensions of the strategy space remain under the sovereign, individual control of the players. We consider a standard extension of the Nash equilibrium concept denoted as a partial cooperative equilibrium as well as an equilibrium concept in which the coalition of cooperators has a leadership position. Existence results are stated and we identify conditions under which the various equilibrium concepts are equivalent. We apply this framework to existing models of multi-market oligopolies and international pollution abatement. In a multi-market oligopoly, typically, a merger paradox emerges in the partial cooperative equilibrium. The paradox vanishes if the cartel attains a leadership position. For international pollution abatement treaties, cooperation by a sufficiently large group of countries results in a Pareto improvement over the standard tragedy of the commons outcome described by the Nash equilibrium.     

Breaking the Perverse Health-debt Cycle in Sri Lanka: Policy Options

This paper proposes a finite mixture model to examine how health adversities influence indebtedness of Sri Lankan households. After accounting for unobserved heterogeneity, our empirical analysis reveals that households headed by ill-health members and those with hospitalization are inevitably more vulnerable to indebtedness. The ill-health status of other working-age members also creates milder effects on household indebtedness. We confirm that the health-debt cycle is more severe for urban households, compared to their rural counterparts. The study is testimony to re-emphasizing the role of government in providing much-needed financial protection to vulnerable households and implementing differentiated-policy packages for urban and rural sectors in order to effectively break the health-debt cycle.     

Household composition and agricultural technology in Zambia

While a small percentage of Zambia's farming households practice advanced agricultural technics and produce significant yields, the majority of Zambians have barely broken out of subsistence level farming. Government programs to assist the small farmer have proven unsuccessful largely because of economic pessure to keep family members on the farm as laborers. A household's size, as well as the age and sex of its members, are crucial factors in moving the rural population toward agricultural development. A large family is clearly an asset to Zambian farmers. At peak points in the agricultural season, it is difficult to hire helpers since everyone is working on their own land, even the poor villagers. Because young men and women from poorer households tend to migrate to the cities, these families are much smaller and have fewer males than the more prosperous families. Although a Zambian man's ideal strategy is to marry several wives and raise a large number of children to ensure a labor supply, this is difficult to carry out. Only after achieving a certain minimal technological level can a farming household support a large enough group to continue to develop. The agricultural development that has taken place so far in Zambia is largely the outcome of demonstration effects and, more recently, the fruit of family remittances from the cities.     

依靠组织创新推动农业技术进步

农业生产的一些基本特征决定了农户家庭是农业生产的基本组织,也是农业技术需求的主体.在技术和科学分立之后,公共研究机构成为农业技术的供给主体.供给和需求之间需要一定的中介组织进行连接.我国计划经济体制下的农业推广体系在向市场经济过渡的过程中逐渐失效,直接导致了农户家庭对农业技术的需求不足和公共研究机构的供给不足.组织缺陷制约了农业技术的进步.因此,有必要大力推进农村组织创新,构建与市场经济相适应的农村组织体系.     

新时期农业产业化各参与者的职能定位

农业产业化实现了农业资源在更大范围、更高层次上的优化配置和生产要素的重新组合 ,是农业现代化发展的有效途径。农业产业化的经营主体是市场经济的主体 ,即农户和企业而不是政府 ;企业与农户之间建立利益共同体是实现“双赢”的基础 ;政府是农业产业化的支持者、宏观调控者和公共服务者 ;市场才是农业产业化经营的真正“龙头” ,资源优势、产品优势 ,最终必须通过市场 ,才能成为经济优势和商品优势。建立宏观调控下的农业产业化市场导向机制 ,实现国家调控市场、市场引导企业、市场引导农户的战略目标。     

Clean cooking energy transition in Nigeria: Policy implications for Developing countries

Lack of access to clean cooking energy systems negatively affects the health and welfare of millions of people in developing countries. Different factors such as household income, household size, fuel price, and information spread have been identified as barriers to the widespread uptake of clean cooking systems. However, analyses exploring the dynamic influences of these factors towards accelerating clean cooking from the long-term perspective are limited. Here, we employ a system dynamics modelling framework to simulate how various strategies could affect the adoption of clean cooking systems in Nigeria over time. Our results reveal that clean cooking adoption is a fluctuating process, and the trends present a non-linear behaviour. We found that the adoption of clean cooking energy systems would occur faster early in the simulating year among urban households than in rural households. The results indicate that, at low prices of liquefied petroleum gas, many rural households will switch to clean cookstoves with higher adoption rates than consumers in urban households. Additionally, results from baseline scenario analysis revealed that, without significant policy interventions, not all households would switch to clean cooking. Our analysis further indicates that households with fewer members tend to transition quicker to clean cooking options than larger households. The impact of clean cooking due to communication among households would be more significant among rural households than among urban households. While the model results are perceptive, we emphasise that potent policies are needed to accelerate the diffusion and adoption of clean cooking energy systems in Nigeria and other African countries.     

宋代乡村第五等户在城市经济发展中的作用

宋代乡村第五等户是宋代户口的主要构成部分。在农业人口为主体的封建国家中,他们是社会生产的主要承担者、国家财富的主要创造者、推动经济发展与物质文明进步的重要力量。宋代乡村第五等户在国家户口中比例大,生存条件差,特别是在失去土地无法生存后,“流移转徙”到城市,为城市经济发展提供了人力资源,为资本主义萌芽做了早期准备,推动了城市服务业发展,促进了城市商品经济发展。探讨第五等户在经济发展中的作用,对寻求今天解决农民问题的方式方法,具有现实意义。     

Public policies promoting the informal sector: Effects on incomes,employment and growth in Burkina Faso

Since the 1990s, Burkina Faso has intensified the implementation of supporting policies to enhance the access to capital and liquidity in the informal sector. This paper analyzes the effects of these public policies on incomes, employment and economic growth by taking into account the interactions between the informal sector, the formal sector and the agricultural sector. For that purpose, policy shocks are simulated through the Partnership for Economic Policy Network's static computable general equilibrium (CGE) model which is adapted to the structure of a 2008-based social accounting matrix developed by the International Food Policy Research Institute. Our results highlight mixed effects including a paradoxical contraction of the informal sector, the formal sector and economic growth as well as an improvement of the informal households and the farmers’ incomes.     

How much is too much: Does the size of income support transfers affect labor supply?

Cash transfer programs pursue mainly protective objectives, but can also impact rural livelihoods by inducing investments in productive activities and changing household labor allocation. We adopt a continuous treatment approach to quantify how households’ labor supply responds to transfer size. We find a shift from paid labor to own farm labor and find that the transfer size is well within a level that would have disincentive effects on time spent on own farm activities. The switch from paid to own farm labor occurs at lower levels of transfers for labor-constrained households, and at higher levels for non-labor constrained households.     

Intra‐Household Specialization in Housework in the United States and Denmark*

Objective. Focusing on housework activities, we hypothesize that the degree of specialization is influenced by economic notions of efficiency, as well as by time constraints and egalitarian values. Methods. Employing time‐use data on U.S. and Danish couples, we construct a composite index measure of intra‐household specialization. We analyze the comparability of reported time use and our specialization index using different types of data, and then model specialization using a multivariate two‐limit Tobit. Results. We find evidence that Danish households specialize less than U.S. households and that children, particularly preschool‐aged children, are associated with significantly increased specialization in the United States but not in Denmark. Conclusions. We postulate that the more egalitarian social structure in Scandinavia is a driving force behind the lower rate of specialization observed in Denmark. Further, we believe the subsidized child‐care services provided by the Danish welfare system reduce the impact children have on specialization in ordinary housework tasks.     

Migration stage and household income inequality: Evidence from the Valle Alto of Bolivia

A three-stage diffusion model of international migration and inequality posits that household income inequality first increases, then decreases, and finally increases again as a community's migration experience deepens. Analysis of data from a survey of 417 households in the Valle Alto region of Bolivia supports this model. Concomitant with the region's overall position in the middle stage, the results indicate that income inequality among active migrant households is less than that of non-migrant households, suggesting that migration reduces inequality. Furthermore, income inequality between urban and rural areas is diminished by migration. Individual towns in the region, however, illustrate all three stages of the diffusion model. The study supports other research showing that the middle stage of migration generates the most remittances, the highest commitment of resources to the home community, and the lowest inequalities among households.     

China＇s Household Tradition and Its Rural Development Path： With Reference to Traditional Russian and Indian Village Communities

能够对现代社会产生长远影响的本源型传统，构成现代社会发展的基础性制度。在东方国家的本源型传统中，不同于俄国和印度的村社制，中国是家户制，并在此基础上形成独特的中国农村发展道路。其中包括：以家户经营为基础的农业经营组织，家户内部农工商结合基础上的农工商互补经济，家户互助合作基础上的农村合作形式，家国共治基础上的农村治理体系。在中国农村发展进程中，尽管家户制一度被抛弃，但仍构成当下及未来农村发展的制度底色。     

China’s Household Tradition and Its Rural Development Path: With Reference to Traditional Russian and Indian Village Communities

Sources of tradition that produce a lasting influence upon modern society are fundamental to that society’s development. Among Eastern sources of tradition, the village systems of Russia and India are very unlike the Chinese household system, a system that served as the foundation for China’s unique path of rural development. This system includes the following features: the organization of agricultural operations on the basis of household operations; an economy where agriculture, industry and commerce complement each other on the basis of their integration at the household level; forms of agricultural cooperation based on mutual assistance and cooperation among households; and a system of rural governance based on the joint governance by household and state. In China’s rural development process, the household system, though at one time discarded, still constitutes the institutional backdrop for current and future rural development.     

The microeconomics of distribution: A simulation of the farm economy

A simulation model that incorporates both production and consumption behavior of farm households in Taiwan is presented. The model is used to analyze the effects of policy instruments (price supports, minimum wages, taxes, subsidies, demographic policies, and land and capital redistribution) on the aggregate values of the endogenous variables of the system—the supplies of output and labor, the demands of factors and consumption, income and expenditure—and their distribution among households. The model differs from other simulation models in that it is based on microsimulation, in which the joint distribution of individual household characteristics such as farm-specific prices, initial endowments of land and capital, and numbers of workers and dependents, is explicitly taken into account. As a result, the model is capable of capturing the distributional as well as aggregate impacts of policy changes.     

Food Assistance Programs and Outcomes in the Context of Welfare Reform*

Objective. Food assistance programs play an important role in meeting the basic needs of low‐income households. We consider how the Food Stamp Program (FSP), labor force participation, and food insecurity status affect outcomes of low‐income households under different program designs and economic conditions. Methods. Data from the Survey of Program Dynamics allow estimation of the effects of participation in FSP, labor market participation, and food insecurity on each other. To obtain estimates of behavioral relationships, we apply a simultaneous equation model and make a set of plausible assumptions about identification to implement the instrumental variable estimation. Results. Food insecurity has a positive effect on FSP participation, while labor force participation reduces FSP participation. Furthermore, FSP participation is more responsive to changes in the amount of program benefits than to changes in nonlabor income. Labor force participation has no direct effect on food insecurity; although not statistically significant, the effect of FSP participation on food insecurity is positive. A higher wage rate decreases FSP participation and increases participation in the labor force. Conclusion. The structural approach, which relies on particular identifying assumptions, allows us to explicity examine linkages among food program participation, labor force participation, and well‐being, measured in terms of food insecurity. The results provide evidence that among low‐income households, program parameters affect FSP participation, but no evidence that the food assistance reduces food insecurity.     

Policy modelling of the trade-off between agricultural development and land degradation—the Sudan case

The agricultural policy model of the trade-off between agricultural growth and land degradation that we have developed, with Sudan as an application, shares common features with the computable general equilibrium (CGE) models. The model is used to address two questions. First, what are the future prospects of a green gross domestic product (GDP), are there reasons for alarm or not, and to what extent? Secondly, which among the four policies of price incentives, property rights, poverty reduction, and human capital are more effective than the others? We show that the prospects of natural resource-friendly agricultural development in Sudan—a rising green GDP—are not promising in the medium run, but that, indeed, there is a range of effective policies and choices that could reduce the trade-off between economic growth and land degradation.